Emmy Rossum on sex scene exploitation

By admin

14 January 2015

Emmy Rossum thinks sex scenes are often necessary to show the “honest truth” of a character.

The 28-year-old actress stars as Fiona Gallagher in hit Showtime series Shameless, a dramedy series that involves plenty of raunchy moments. And she’s given her thoughts on how to figure out whether such scenes are necessary or “exploitative”.

'We’re just trying to find the honest truth of what a character would do in that moment'

“We’re just trying to find the honest truth of what a character would do in that moment,” Emmy said at the cable network’s Sexuality and Television: A Female Perspective event, as reported by Entertainment Weekly. “If the honest truth involves sexuality, if it involves intimacy between two characters or violence between two characters, whatever it is, as long as it feels real.”

But she also noted there are times she reads her Shameless episodes and isn’t sold on the necessity of an intimate encounter. She admitted that’s not just restricted to sex either, and can apply to overly emotional scenes.

“Sometimes we see drafts or ideas and we think, ‘This doesn’t feel necessary. How is this furthering the story?' But things can feel exploitive in a lot of different ways,” Emmy explained. “They can feel emotionally exploitive, a character could cry too much for no reason because that seems like the obvious thing to do.”

The show’s executive producer Nancy Pimental weighed in on the topic too. According to her, there’s never been pressure to be racy just because of Showtime’s demographic.

“Nothing has ever been like, ‘Well, we’re on Showtime, we gotta show some titties,'” she said. “It all has a nucleus, an origin and a base.”